The Russians

Photography exhibition by Nathan
Farb, based on a trip he took in 1977 to Novosibirsk as a host of the American
exhibition Photography USA, part of a
cultural exchange program under President Carter’s administration. Farb
photographed a number of visitors to this exhibition. He used a Polaroid camera
and gave them the resulting photo. However, unknown to his subjects and to the
Soviet authorities, Farb kept a negative of each Polaroid. He managed to smuggle
the negatives out of the country with a diplomatic pouch at the US Embassy. The
portraits show a diversity of people. Some are dressed according to Western
trends of the late 1970s; others are wearing more traditional clothing. In this
series, Farb gave the Cold War enemy a human face.

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